My First Josh Concert

My First Josh Concert

I can't figure out how to post my pictures in this section, but I did post some on page 13 of the Straight To You Tour Des Moines, IA 08/10/2011 concert under Tour & Tickets. I would greatly appreciate those pictures counting as archive pictures, please go look and hopefully enjoy them to those of you who haven't seen them yet. I didn't post too many. Thanks, Heather Here's another concert favorite. The Josh Groban concert experience was great!! We first got to go up to the top of the Arena and each got a free tote bag, VIP laminate with a lanyard already on it, and a cool stainless steel water bottle.
The food was amazing fruits, fine cheeses, sliders, corn fritters, very large mushroom caps stuffed with spicy sausage, chicken strips, cookies, free cold bottled water and pop, and a cash bar, plus a raffle for I think autographed tour t-shirts. We were at a table where we met and older Mother and Daughter from Minneapolis and another young single girl that won the fan club meet and greet contest that was also from there, and a couple who the husband on their wedding anniversary back in June surprised his wife with two tickets of the front row ticket package and she returned the favor by booking a huge suite at one of our capital city's finer hotels, that had a great view of the capital and also more room than they knew what to do with, sweet story. We then went down and found our group by the ticket office and got our meet & greet stickers to put on. Very nice people from IPTV came up to me and were very kind to me. We had a great guy J.D., manning my wheelchair and he made sure we got to the meet & greet early and then he took me and my Mom to the very front of the line ahead of a long line of people. Josh came out from behind a curtain and walked up to me and shook my hand and we introduced ourselves and we weren't supposed to get autographs but another fan club member said bring something along just in case. So I had this poster that was a copy of a pencil sketch an artist and fan in New York City had done and he signed it and asked questions about it like he had all the time in the world and there wasn't a long line of people, which there was! I was also carrying his mainly white with black lettering and trim tote bag, and he asked me if he could autograph that for me too and I'm like sure. I gave him a bag that had some things for Sweeney, his dog that travels on his bus with him, and when I told him what was in the bag he joked sure of course everything's for Sweeney. But I had also bought a Ringo Starr, drummer for the Beatles pin from the Hard Rock Cafe, because I knew he had the t-shirt Ringo created. He looked surprised when I told him about the pin and thought it was pretty cool. I got out of the wheelchair to get my picture taken with him and I wanted to say how his music had touched my very soul, but what came out was you smell really good, a bit embarrassing. My Mom later told me Josh said, "I do?" While I was on cloud nine my Mother's turn came up and Josh's charity is now focused on raising money to help the arts in schools and arts programs for youth that are being cut out by the government, and in each city he donates money to a group and they get to meet him and get great seats to his concert too. My Mom went up to him and told him she had been an elementary school music teacher for 30 years and she wanted to thank him for what he was doing for the arts. He responded with a charming thank you to her for all her teaching which totally won her over even more. We had gotten these beautiful gold commemorative tickets through the fan club and I brought one with me so she would have something he could sign and sure enough he asked if she had something she wanted signed and he signed her gold ticket. We then rushed back upstairs to get to our seats in time for Elew, Eric Lewis from America's Got Talent, that played amazing songs and arrangements of songs we pretty much all knew on the piano, he was amazing and I'm glad we didn't miss it thanks to J.D. our very capable wheelchair driver. Then 30 minutes after Elew, Josh Groban came out on a stage with a grand piano at the back of the Arena for two and a half songs. Then he walked through the crowd to the stage in front of us and with the new compact camera I had bought for Tim McGraw's concert, but really didn't use, I was able to get 220 really great pictures of Elew and Josh Groban.
Fans on Tim McGraw's message board had recommended this camera and the reviews were great and they really knew what they were talking about. Josh requests that people turn their flashes off, so this was all new territory for me. But having seats front row center helped with the amount of great pictures I was able to get. My parents discovered that Josh Groban has a really great sense of humor too. His voice and piano and drum playing were all in fine form, his singing and playing were perfect. At the end of the concert there was J.D. with my wheelchair and he even took me straight to my parents car across the street from the Arena, really great guy and they don't take tips so we couldn't even tip him, we just thanked him profusely. All in all quite a terrific experience. Oh and I got the tour t-shirt, the gorgeous program, a really cool mug, and a really cool messenger bag, half of these items are my Birthday presents. My Birthday was the day before the concert and so it was part of my Birthday celebration. Thanks IPTV and Josh Groban and thanks for reading. Heather